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Type an em-dash on an iPhone

Typography and punctuation geeks rejoice! It's easy to type an em-dash on the iPhone's or iPod touch's virtual keyboard. To do so, tap the .?123 key to switch to the numeric keypad. Then touch and hold on the Hyphen key to reveal a pop-up strip showing an em-dash. Slide to the em-dash and release your finger.

Note that this basic trick works with many other keys on the virtual keyboard.

WordPerfect Thinks Small

In response to the burgeoning laptop market, WordPerfect is putting together a new word processor called LetterPerfect. LetterPerfect files will be 100% compatible with WordPerfect IBM 5.1 files (and theoretically with WordPerfect Mac 1.0.4 files, but we don't know exactly how that will work and WordPerfect Mac should be at release 2.0 before LetterPerfect comes out). LetterPerfect will not have as many features as WordPerfect, thus reducing its size and making it more practical for use with floppy-based laptops. Logically enough for a portable, mouse support will be one of the features to go.

Macintosh users with dreams of low-cost Mac Portables floating in their heads may well wonder if a version of LetterPerfect is slated for the Mac, but for now, we cannot find any information about a Macintosh version. If a Mac version of LetterPerfect were introduced, it would compete with the popular WriteNow and MacWrite II in the low-end of the word processor market.